Dr. Wieland Holfelder oversees Google's Engineering Center in Munich, home to the Google Safety Engineering Center, he also leads the engineering activities around Digital Sovereignty for Google in Europe. Prior to Google, Dr. Holfelder worked in Silicon Valley for more than 12 years, among others as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Mercedes-Benz Research and Technology North America, Inc. As part of his Ph.D. research, he worked at IBM's European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany, the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA, and the University of Mannheim. He holds a master’s in computer science and economics and a doctorate in computer science from the University of Mannheim, Germany. In 2020 Dr. Holfelder was recognized as a “GI Fellow” by the German Computer Science association (gi.de). Among others, Dr. Holfelder is a member of the senate of en.acatech.de, a member of the supervisory board of dfki.de/en, a member of baiosphere.org/en/ai-council, a member of the supervisory board of mri.tum.de, a member of the Board of Trustees of deutsches-museum.de, a member of the Board of Directors of muenchner-kreis.de/en, a member of the advisory board of mdsi.tum.de/en, and a member of the advisory board of www.mdsi.tum.de and bidt.digital/en.